The film's focus was on the charactors, not on the setting. A lot of
people are pissed at the film because it never showed what the CUBE
was in the end. The film is about the charactors. Five charactors, placed
in this horrifying set that breaks through the shell of their image
and into their true personality.

Quentin, for example, had the "hero" image all over him during
the film's beginning. In the end, we found out he was a monster... looking
for redemption, but still ended up being a monster.

Kazan's charactor was mentally disabled... this is important since
he was not effected by the Cube's horrific atmosphere. His mind was
too primitive to "crack". He effected those around him though.
Kazan brought out Holloway's motherly nature, and Quentin's selfishness.
He brought out a protective, hero-like nature in the two charactors
who 'hate the world' (near the end of the film), Leaven and Worth.

Rennes was there to die, basically. His terrifying death add's to the
film's setting and atmosphere.

I still don't like the ending though. Leaven's and Worth's deaths were
useless to the film.

It's still a great film, though.

KOMENTAR 1: THE CUBE

Kazan was never in the system, he was the person that knew the truth.
The truth about the machine,
the machine is technology, money, greed, hate. Kazan knew all along
because he was never actually in machine. he never help build it, he
never worked in it and participated in it. Kazan was a retard, so he
never had the abilities to be in the machine.
everyone else were part of this technology machine, because of money.
live in the system, die in the system.

KOMENTAR 2: THE CUBE

We are all traped in this 'self-trap-world'.
Who made this almost infinite trap?
We all made it, bit by bit.
Why? Nobody knows!,
When does it started? Nobody knows!
Why we made it? nobody knows!
Does it has any porpouse? No!

Does it make seanse? No!
The message is beautifully clear:
1)is there a way out? - yes!
2)everybody can runaway alive! - No!

Ok! so, who's gonna survive??

The answer is: Only those with
an evolved intelligence!

It means:

1)they, who doesn't know nothing of nothing
are gonna be the first ones to die,
they just will we cuted into pieces.

2)The next are gonna be those, who believe
in 'faith' like:'Special talented abilities'
to scape. To those, the acid will burn
their faces to the bones.

3)The next ones, are gonna be those who can get
easily desperated, they are gonna fall into the
darkness.

4)The next to die, are gonna be those
with the oportunity to scape thanks to their
intelligence, but at the last minute, they
where touched by the human 'love-and-mercy' side
which made them return to the trap. They are gonna
die in the hands of the violent ones.

5)The next to die, are gonna be those who are
violent, and cannot control their impulses,
their animal side. They will paint the walls with
his own blood.

6)The last ones to die, are gonna be those
who simply doesn't want to live,and prefer to
stay and die in the trap. Simply because they
don't have a reason to live.

So, the only ones to survive, are gonna be those,
whose 'astronomical' intelligence, went further,
than the simple human. The super 'intellingent'
human, beyond, fellings, beyond remorses, almost
like a computer. The future belongs to them.

This film is not fantasy or sci-fi,
this is a cruel metaphore of natural selection
and evolution of intelligence in this planet.

Is too bad, that the most of us, are not gonna
survive.
CK.

ESEJ: PRIMERJAVA SIMBOLIKE V FILMU "THE
CUBE" S PLATONOVO VOTLINO

Posting: Achtung: This essay is long, and it is written from an Objectivist
perspective.
So, if you're like most people, you'll hate it, and me, instantly. You've
been warned.
I once wrote about Plato's parable of the cave. It was a scenario he
contrived to represent
the human condition. In every respect, I think CUBE is a modern-day
parable as
well-devised (if not better) than Plato's.
Essentially, argues Plato, the human condition can be expressed like
this:
Men live in caves, shackled so that they cannot move, not even to alter
their field of
vision.They stare at a cave wall. Behind the prisoners is a fire they
cannot see.
Models of objects move past the fire, casting shadows on the wall.
The men moving these models also speak, and the shackled men hear the
echoes.
If one of these shackled men escaped into the outside world, it would
be completely
foreign to him. He would need to learn a new paradigm: things, not shadows,
voices, not
echoes.
If he then returned to the cave, he would be unable to communicate this
new paradigm to
the other shackled men.
When I first read the parable in high school I naively assumed that
Plato simply meant that
one's ability to understand reality hinges upon one's experiences. I
now know that Plato
meant that men are not able to know true reality, that we only perceive
impressions of
things, things that truly exist in another dimension (literally!). The
more I think about it,
the grimmer, more desolate becomes Plato's vision of humanity. Men,
conceptually, are
doomed to live shackled in the darkness of a cave.
CUBE is much the same, although I believe the message is far less bleak
-- despite the
tragic ending.
The Cube maze itself is a wonderful visual representation of the modern
environment that
serves for many people as a prison. The characters are an appropriate
mix of people you
find in a modern society. Ultimately, I believe the message of the film
is not religious, or
even spiritual in any way. In fact, Worth states the theme of the film
clearly: There is no
conspiracy, no mastermind. Our society is the result of a giant, chaotic,
blundering mass
movement. Nothing religious about it.
We are like single rain drops in a storm front the size of the West
Coast. We are bound
under certain laws of reality, but each drop is too small to see the
big picture,
Yet we assume that someone, somewhere must be organizing the movement
of the storm
front.
This is a fallacy that most would asrcibe to religion alone, the idea
that a Prime Mover
directs everything from behind the curtain. But in fact, it is a fallacy
endemic to the entire
Platonic school of philosophy (of which religion is just a sub-category).
Worth shattered the other cubers' bubble when he made his argument,
and he contradicts
Plato's cave theory as well. How so? Plato's cave theory relies upon
these object-bearing
men who make all the shadows and the echoes that the shackled men perceive.
But, if the shackled men represent the human race, who does Plato intend
the
object-bearers to represent?*
(*It's possible Plato intended these object-bearers to represent philosophers,
while the
shackled men are "plain folk." This interpretation only pushes
the point back a step
further. Because even the object-bearers are not dealing with direct
objects. They are not
passing an apple around the fire, but a model of an apple. The point
being: Even the
enlightened are one-step removed from the truth.)
Platonic philosophy's fundamental tenet is that the actions in the universe
are ultimately
governed by forces whose nature are defined by the fact that humans
will never be able to
directly perceive them, let alone understand them.
In a bizarre, twisted sense, it's true: We can understand the abstract
notion that although
all variables are bound to obey certain laws, there are simply too many
variables to predict
their behavior. Chaos theory. So Plato's argument is true in the sense
that we cannot
directly perceive the actions of the almost 6 billion people that make
our global society
move.
To return to the Wizard of Oz metaphor, Plato's fallacy lies not so
much in whether or not
he believes there's a wizard behind the curtain, but in that he believes
there is a curtain at
all (where the curtain represents a barrier to truth, knowledge, etc.)
Worth's argument is:
Look! It's all right in front of you, it is just senseless and out of
control!
But it is not true that we are each an insignificant variable at the
mercy of the other several
billion. To arrive at that conclusion amounts to a complete negation
of the things that
make us human. And what makes us human is most certainly NOT what Holloway
says on
the subject, regarding the plan to ditch Kazan. She says that whoever
DOESN'T risk
almost certain death to assist the helpless is no longer human. Such
an argument goes
down the slippery altruist slope to the rock bottom conclusion that
proper, morally good
behavior consists of dying, and dying for things in which you have no
vested interest to
boot, i.e. dying for nothing.
No, what makes us human is our self-awareness, our volitional consciousness,
and our
capacity to reason. That's why we don't have to be helpless victims
caught up in the tide of
"Boundless Human Stupidity." (BHS) We often ARE, but the point
is, there is something
we can do about it.
And the extent to which we are victims of BHS is the extent to which
we ignore the things
that REALLY make us human. In the Cube, all the progress made comes
when the
characters think rationally, in terms of goal-oriented, purposeful action.
Indeed, they use
math, the language of pure logic, to escape.
Every problem in the Cube is caused when the Cubers ignore or fail in
their rational
faculties.
Rennes' philosophy of moment-to-moment existence doesn't get him very
far does it?
And Quentin is driven to homicidal madness (the seed of which is arguably
already
present).
If sheer ability is the measure of how worthy one is to escape the Cube,
the first person
who deserves to escape is Leavin, followed by Kazan and Worth.
These three are the core group who each had vital abilities necessary
for escape.
It is at this point I must criticize the film for the scenario involving
ditching Kazan.
It leads people to conclude: "Thank God Holloway didn't let the
group behave 'selfishly'
and ditch Kazan, because he turned out to be very important." Perhaps
Holloway's "vital
purpose" was 'causeless compassion.'
I assert that if Quentin immediately deduced that everything in the
Cube had a purpose
(like Leavin's glasses), SOMEONE among them would have assumed that
Kazan was not
a random variable, either. Someone would have deduced that it WAS in
their best interest
to bring Kazan, that it WAS 'selfish' for them to bring him.
The moral culprit in the notion to ditch Kazan was not "selfishness,"
(which should, and
does, mean nothing more than what's in one's best interest) but rather,
short-sighted,
so-called "pragmatism" which has benefits in the short-term
(making it through a trapped
room), but screwing you in the long term (no one to figure out the astronomical
figures
later).
And this criticism ties back into my assertion that humans are not helpless
victims to
society's chaotic movement simply because we can't reach out and grab
it, or see it all at
once.
When humans exercise their rational faculties, 99 out of 100 times,
cooperation truly is in
everyone's rational best interest. Humans, unlike any other organism,
can grasp abstract
ideas like chaos theory, and although we are still subject to the law,
our minds allow us to
manipulate the law to our advantage. In other words, we can't change
the fact that hissocial choas theory pattern is true, but we can discover
a way to exploit it. That's what
makes us human, as opposed to the animal and plant life that must simply
obey biological
programming.
Like aerodynamics, we do not fly because we know and DEFY the laws of
gravity, but
because we know the law of gravity and how to exploit it to our advantage.
This is the human quality behind every discovery throughout history.
And it is the quality
that would allow people to escape the cube.
The solution to the Cube is also the solution to the bigger social problem
Worth
addresses. Our society, as is, is just a headless blunder, because nobody
WANTS to stick
their head out to see the big picture. But we could. All of us could.
Every last human
being could look at the big picture and understand that the actions
of every individual has
an affect on all the others, and the more people who put forth a co-ordinated
COOPERATIVE effort, the better off everyone will be.
The economist Ricardo coined the positive result of this way of thinking
as comparative
advantage. Modern altruist-collectivists, however, would have you believe
that
cooperation is a virtue of a moral system that puts the well-being of
the group (or
sometimes another single member of the group, as in Kazan) ahead of
one's self. But's
that, in short, is bullshit.
Someone asserted on this list that the cubers die because they are all
so "self-absorbed."
Wrong. We live in a world where people don't even know what 'self' means,
let alone
what it is to be self-interested. How many of you have heard that stupid
fable about five
people in a blizzard, each unwilling to share the flammable possessions
they each have
(one is a millionairre with paper money, etc). They all freeze and die
because they didn't
make a fire because they didn't share. If you think this fable is actually
AGAINST
selfishness, then that only proves my point. The cubers did not die
because they were too
self-absorbed. We don't know how to be self-absorbed. And sadly, that's
largely because
all the people who teach us how BAD selfishness is are the one's telling
us confusing
bullshit like "selfishness means you never cooperate with others.
selfishness means you
won't help a retarded person at the risk of your own life."
I think the same person also posted that the real traps inside the Cube
are the people.
That is absolutely true, although the literal traps are meaningful and
significant as well.
Deadly barriers are thrust into our path (sometimes deservedly, sometimes
not) and many
people just can't cope with it. So I see the tragic ending as a device
to get people to realize
the importance of realizing the consequences of ignoring Worth's revelation.
People snap and go postal all the time (Columbine), and every time it
happens we all
wonder "why? why? why?" and almost everyone is ready with
their own version
of "the man behind the curtain," be it God, or the Military
Industrial Complex, or aliens,
etc. But the truth is, these incidents are the result of billions of
human variables
ALLOWING themselves to be thrown about in a violent tide of unthinking,
apathetic fear.
The solution to all of this comes back to both Plato's cave, and the
Cube.
Plato's cave is bleak because is says all mankind is, to be brief, helpless
and ignorant.
Cube is certainly tragic, but adds glimmers of hope. The deaths of the
good people in
Cube at the hands of a psychpath is not intended to dishearten and discourage,
but to
incite rage over the pointlessless of the destruction of lives that
was completely
preventable. Kazan escapes. Leavin and Worth died, but not before solving
the Cube
itself.
Some might say that the Cube's true modus operandi was making people
crazy enough to
kill, so the heroes really didn't defeat the Cube. But that argument
depends on the idea that
Leavin and Worth are responsible for monsters like Quentin.
(I could here raise other criticisms against Cube for introducing the
element embodied in
the line "I've felt guilty for ruining the world since I was 7"
but
that would require too much digression.)
Ultimately, Cube demonstrates that there is no curtain, and certainly
no wizard. Cube
shows the efficacy of dealing with that truth in a rational and logical
fashion.
Although flawed in the realm of the ethics it represents, and conclusively
tragic, Cube
wants you to challenge and fight, not surrender and die as a willing
victim to either an
imagined mastermind or the massive tides of BHS.